International Affairs

It is easy to (falsely) accuse Ron Paul of anti-Semitism because of his daily rants on the floor of Congress about the war on Iraq being fostered by Jewish lobbyists in America. Widespread suggestions make the connection and the so-called neocon movement clearly advanced the project. Paul opposes foreign aid to everyone in general and to Israel in particular. But Israel is not a product of the initiatives or the imagination of American or Israeli Jewish lobbyists, and to assume it is, as is widespread today in American academia and globalist pop culture, is itself anti-Semitic and virulently nihilistic. And these positions have tragically been fostered and nurtured by the American State Department under Secretary Clinton and President Obama. But you won't find that in Ron Paul. Rising political forces in Israel like Moshe Feiglin's "Jewish leadership" faction have long called for a breaking-free from American aid to Israel, much as Paul does.

 “Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion.” — Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem

It might be seen in hindsight that in Desert Storm, George H.W. Bush was in fact bringing a final end to World War II, as Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party was an organism directly related to the Nazi movement, mentored by the Third Reich and modeled on its terror tactics. In hindsight it seemed odd that H.W., honored veteran of that conflict, didn't end it there but left it standing, leaving the dirty deed to the next generation.
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The one hope outside of Israel stopping the ayatollahs is the people of Iran themselves.

They made a half-hearted attempt with the Green Revolution in 2009, but unlike their brothers in revolution throughout the Middle East and Africa, they did not have the courage to see it through and do whatever it took to overthrow their government.

Kofi Annan’s six-point plan for Syria, providing for a military withdrawal by Syrian forces by tomorrow, never had a chance of success. The reason for that is because of the wiggle room afforded to the Syrian government, which lost its legitimacy long ago.

Annan, the envoy of the United Nations and Arab League, should have known better after his experience with Saddam Hussein in February 1998, which resulted in a deal on the inspection of so-called presidential sites. I covered his peace mission to Baghdad as a reporter and was there when Annan returned to New York describing Saddam as a man he could “do business with.” (The deal with Saddam collapsed after the first (farcical) inspection.) Mercifully, Annan has refrained from describing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the same terms. But the issue of “sovereignty” that was so important for Baghdad (not to mention Moscow and Beijing) will doom the Annan plan in Damascus as well; the Syrian authorities know that, short of an invasion, which would require U.N. authorization to be legal, the international community is obliged to deal with the Assad regime to obtain a negotiated solution.

Judging from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC last night, you would think that he received a green light from President Obama to attack Iran unilaterally.

My reading of their meeting at the White House yesterday was that although Obama recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself “by itself,” as he said in his own speech to AIPAC on Sunday, he is asking Netanyahu to hold fire. So in the terms of the driver’s manual, Obama has issued a flashing red signal. Not a green light. Not a flashing yellow light meaning proceed with caution. But a flashing red light that means: Come to a complete stop and proceed when the way is clear.

The conversation between President Obama and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu next week in Washington could have huge implications for both deciding on a course of action. What they say to one another and how they interpret each other’s posture will be critical.
 
- Global pressure continues to mount on Iran, making it more difficult for them to go to their people to justify the nuclear program. The economy is starting to come apart at the seams and the sanctions are increasingly biting.

Hillary Clinton has called the deal just struck with North Korea a “modest first step in the right direction.” She’s right. We have been there before.

North Korea has agreed to a nuclear weapons freeze in return for 240,000 tons of food aid to the impoverished and isolated country. Today’s joint announcement from the State Department and Pyongyang comes after direct talks between the United States and North Korea in Beijing. But I doubt it will be popular on Capitol Hill.

President Obama should stop apologizing to the Afghan people about American troops burning the Quran.

The Afghan prisoners converted a holy book into an implement of war by using it to distribute subversive literature.

In doing so they desecrated their holy book and took it out of the realm of being a sacred object. The object the U.S. troops burned was an implement of war and not a holy relic.

Mr. President, please don't apologize for our troops destroying an object our enemies often use in the war of terror against us.

Foreign leaders don’t cast a vote in American elections. But they do have the opportunity to influence the outcome.

In the case of the showdown over Iran’s nuclear program, both Iran and Israel are closely watching the U.S. election. Their actions in the coming months and their calculations about President Obama’s reelection chances will undoubtedly help determine the outcome.

The congressional hawks on Iran didn’t get what they came to hear today from U.S. intelligence chiefs.

Instead of underpinning the argument for military strikes on Iran — (remember Iraq?) — Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, came to a Senate hearing on Capitol Hill with plenty hedging on the Iranian nuclear capability.